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2011年12月18日日曜日

Exibition "school girl complex"

I visited a private photo exibition
(held at Pixiv Zingaro in Nakano Broadway, 15-27 Dec.)
featuring Japanese schoolgirls in symbolic form
aiming to express obsession, desire, and
simultaneously, fear in school days.

After the success of this "complex" series,
the photographer AOYAMA Yuki has been
releasing collections one after another
which have a strong affinity for Akiba culture.
(His works can be seen online.)

In the exibition room, works are arranged
in chronological order, on the subjects of
symbolizing, scan, package, relationship, etc
for respective years.

I thought that the most distinctive features
aside from invisible faces of models were
neutral white balance and
wordless backgrounds.

These elements make screens clear,
transparent, and notably symbolic.
But contrary to my expectation,
quite a few works do not use these styles
and fail to have a symbolic atmosphere
especially in photos with model(s) in a factitive pose.

On the other hand, in works true to the concept,
movements in the frame are suppressed
by its neutrality and lack of context,
and in consequence, they gain eternal tranquility.

In contrast to this calmness beyond the surface of the screen,
here stand a heart fluttered and eyes looking away (*).
This difference in temperature gives his works a kind of
narcotic properties. Maybe it is the prominent reason of hits.

According to the author, hiding characteristics of individual models
and highlighting their school uniforms has also the effect
to evoke nostalgia of each spectator, but unfortunately (or fortunately)
my junior high and high school were without uniform (*)
and I think I did not experience the aimed effect
so I am interested in how others feel watching the same stimuli.

* Nearly all of Japanese has their own memories of their school uniform, and countless artworks take this fact as given. Curse it.

The last item of the exbition is a sequence of motion pictures.
I watched two to three of them and they seemed to be
produced based on the same consept of the still images
but they were not so good: Too eloquent gestures.
It seemed that flouncing flesh and blood did not sit quietly
on the chair of symbol prepared.

If I were the producer, I will carefully select the motions
so that personalities do not show through or
train actresses to control themselves from head to toe.

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Well, at the exibition, the concept "symbolize"
was burned in my brain. I was so eager to emulate it
that I shot her, a "twelve-year-old" girl.